Sara and Robyn say “hallo”

July 4: Bergen to Stavanger (and some new faces are added)

A final farewell to our lovely Bergen hotel, and to the lovely lake in the middle of town.

Today we visited Edvard Greig’s museum and house. Some irrelevant facts…Born in 1843, Greig was only 5ft tall and had a curved spine after he contracted tuberculosis at age 16. His left lung collapsed, leaving his chest wall sunken in on the left side.

He was born in Bergen into a prosperous mercantile family with Norwegian, Scottish and Danish roots. Edvard’s mum had studied piano and singing and gave him piano lessons from the age of five.

He was inspired by prominent composers like Mozart and particularly Schumann, but his mentor, the Norwegian composer Rikard Nordraak encouraged him to find his own unique voice, incorporating features characteristic of Norwegian folk music.

We were given a guided tour of the villa where he and his Nina lived (she was his first cousin) including the piano he used – a Steinway of course.

He wrote many of his compositions from a little hut at the bottom of his garden, with a glorious view over the fjord.

The gardens around the villa are lovely with great views across the water.

We were entertained with a 30-minute piano recital of some of his works. Greig’s “Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt features “ trolls” which are mythical creatures that live in rocks or caves. You can see them everywhere in Norway (including in Chris and Tone’s garden). After the concert, we got the bus back to Bergen, collected our luggage and took the short flight to Stavanger.

Chris met us and drove us to Chris and Tone’s summer house which has stunning views across the fjord. Picture postcard stuff. Chris had kindly erected an Australian flag to welcome us!

Chris also provided Robyn with a hard hat as her room has a sloping roof on which you are prone to hit your head.

A lovely dinner and we learnt a lot about Norway, including their penchant for building tunnels under mountains and underwater. They lay claim to having the longest underwater tunnel in the world, and many Norwegians came to work on the Snowy hydro scheme because of this expertise.